Saturday, February 28, 2015

Nutshelled:
The idea behind net neutrality is simple: internet providers must
treat all the traffic on their networks equally, no charging to let
some data move faster, no slowing down or otherwise hampering content
providers even if they compete with content providers owned by the
internet providers. It is not an attempt to regulate free speech.
Perhaps it is best understood in terms of those who oppose the idea:
Republicans, ATT, Cox, Charter, Verizon and hordes of their lawyers.

Evidence:
The Bundestag approved grinding Syriza and the Greeks even further
into the dirt by a vote of 542
to
32, which
pretty well settles the question of who got the better of the deal.
Deflation in
Greece is now galloping along at 1.2%
per month. There
is no way the Greeks can do anything but suffer or simply say 'no' in
a way that even the Germans might understand.

Victory
Parade Rescheduled:
US GDP growth in 4Q/2014 slowed to 2.2% from the claimed 5% growth
rate in 3Q/2014. The stock market did not react, because actual GDP –
or an other aspect of reality – has no influence as long as the Fed
keeps pumping out the money. I'm
With Stupid:
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History has caved in to pressure
from two, count 'em, two folks who objected to a science museum
mounting an exhibit honoring Charles Darwin because Darwin didn't
believe in intelligent design. Behind
The Curtain:
Now that they've got all that PR for bumping their workers up to $9
an hour, Walmart feels free to keep hiding how drastic their gender
pay gap is and they most certainly do not want to talk about how many
hundreds of thousands of their employees can't
get enough hours to make ends meet (because then they'd qualify
for benefits, the dirty socialists).
Let them eat
cake, day old, from the dumpster apply
for food stamps.

The
Meaning Of ISIS Is:
Rick Goodhair Perry says that “ISIS represents the worst threat to
freedom since communism.” Newt
warns that ISIS intends to take over America by supporting
Hillary. And
Scott Walker, taking time off from starving the Wisconsin
university system while telling them they
can cover up rape if they want to, says that if he can destroy
teachers' unions he can easily defeat ISIS. Wet
Water:
Hedge funds are pretty much a con, always have been. As long as it
is only the very rich they are fleecing, more power to 'em.

Misdirection:
We hear lots of politicians (always a cautionary sign) claiming that
the nation's weak job creation is due to the educational failings of
the underclass. Evidence for this view is thin to non-existent. It
is just another way of blaming the victim. If there were such a
connection, why would the
inflation-adjusted earnings of educated Americans have gone nowhere
since the late 1990s? Rising
inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has
the power – the bankers and the guys (mostly white males) in the
corner offices.

Friday, February 27, 2015

Neutered:
The FCC has classified broadband internet service a public utility
in a move to preserve “net neutrality” and to prevent
Balkanization of service by how rich you are. It must have been the
right decision; all of the Republican commissioners voted against
the new rules, claiming that the government should not get in the way
of private profits, no matter how outrageous and unwarranted they
are.

Salt
Mines:
If (if?) the Republicans don't get around to funding Homeland
Security by Friday, the impact will be minor; over 80% of the
240,000 employees will be required to keep on working. Sure, they
won't be getting paid, that's why Republican congresscritters have
sworn to forego their pay in a display of cynicpathy. Not.

Second
Helping:
The EU, which 'saved' Ireland's banks by making the Irish taxpayer
assume their debts, says that Ireland now has too much debt (no
snickering) and their banks need even more money. Guess where it's
going to come from. Right. And, the boys from Brussels note, there
is too much unemployment in Ireland because the Irish peasantry has
not responded properly to the massive suffering inflicted on them.
In
closing, they also
note
that all of the above applies nearly uniformly, everywhere
and the world's
only hope
is to
embrace even more austerity and even more money
printing
Quantitative Easing by central banks. Everywhere.
Any questions?

Inquiring
Mind:
In what universe should Portugal be able to sell 10-year bonds with
a 2% interest rate?

Crash
& Burn:
As we've all known, and pretended not to, China's GDP numbers (and
most of the rest of China's economic statistics) are essentially
fiction. Hyperinflation has taken root in Ukraine and the Greek
banks are once again swirling around the drain.
Yet Janet Yellen clings
to her talking points: everything is hunky dory in the US
except... “jobless claims surged unexpectedly” last week. And
the
CPI fell 0.7% - but that's all gas. She said. Quit
Bugging Me:
The CDC says that C. difficile, a bacteria usually found in
hospital, can be contracted in your doctor or dentist's office and
that about half a million Americans are so infected every year, with
15,000 of them dying. Add that to the 70,000 who die from crap they
get infected with in hospitals, and not having health insurance
starts to sound like a good thing.

Mushrooms:
The secret torture chamber operated by the Chicago police for years
is drawing a lot of interest in the media. Expect more stories to
surface. Expect them to be ghastly. Big
Wheel Keep On Turning:
Anti-government protesters are back in the streets in Athens, now
that their new and improved government has turned out to be as
spineless and useless as the previous guys. Perhaps the most
interesting aspect of the protest was that the riot police simply
stood by, even
while the protesters smashed up a pastry shop.

Sticks
& Stones:
NY Governor Andy Cuomo is a little short on subtlety these days; he
has ordered
the mass deletion of government emails just as a federal
investigation of public corruption in Albany is getting underway.
Imagine, corruption in Albany...

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Words
Of A Feather:
According to the Fed's Yellen, everything is rosy except “the
labor force participation rate is lower than most estimates of its
trend, and wage growth remains sluggish, suggesting that some
cyclical weakness persists.” Say
/ Do:
“The
United States does
not support political transitions by non-constitutional means.
Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful,
and legal.” US
State Department spokesman Jen
Psaki, 2/13/15,
ignoring
70 years of evidence to the contrary.

Farceing
Forward:
The current (still current, actually) EU/IMF/ECB vs Greece plan
remains hoping that something will happen in the next few months that
will allow them to once more kick the can down the road. They should
be working on drawing up a plan that would make a Greek default and
exit from the eurozone as painless as possible. Instead all
concerned will continue to pretend that Greece can pay back the
massive debt and rescue the German, French and Italian banks, earning
their way out of perpetual servitude. Ain't gonna happen.

All
In Favor Say Huh?:
Canada's Prime Minister wants fast passage of an anti-terror bill –
no discussion, no disclosure of what the bill contains, just a quick
'yes' is all that's required. Or permitted. PM Harper said it was
essential to pass the bill quickly in order
to ensure that
the government
gets away with it
“the security and safety of Canadians.”

Over
There:
Between 2009 and 2013, McDonald's ducked paying over €1 billion
in European taxes. They're lovin' it; European authorities, not so
much.

Another
Ally:
In Recep Erdoğan's Turkey (and make no mistake, it is his)
you can go to jail for two years for insulting Recep, you can be
arrested for investigating any of his many crimes and
misdemeanors, even if it is your job to do so. And don't even think
about mentioning the genocide
of Turkey's Armenian population a hundred years ago. Drumroll:
The Pentagon is dispatching “a small number of troops” to
Ukraine, supposedly to teach combat medicine. The
UK is sending troops to teach Ukrainian forces to do something or
other. France said it would
not stand idly by and let the Russians attack the
Ukrainian port of Mariupol. Cyprus
has signed a
military alliance with Russia, while a bunch of idiots in Estonia
thought it was a good idea to parade newly arrived US military
equipment a mere 300
yards from the Russian border. And on a serious note, a
dozen A-10 Warthogs – designed to kill Soviet tanks back when
there still were Soviets, have returned to Germany on
their way to the Ukranian front. One
More Shoe:
After seven years, Morgan Stanley
has agreed to pay $2.6 billion to finally “settle”
investigations into the games it played with MBS back in the day. A
year ago they paid $1.25 billion for selling 'faulty' (read
fraudulent) MBS to Fanny and Freddie and another $275 million to the
SEC for other crooked dealings. No members of Morgan Stanley
have to admit any personal wrongdoing and most certainly no one is
going to jail. This adds to the nearly $40 billion that has now been
extracted from the fine folks on Wall Street for MBS shenanigans.
Goldman Sachs is next up.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Flashman:
Is the next step for the Keystone XL pipeline an attempt by the
Republicans to override Obama's veto, so they can blather, blather,
or will they come up with something that has a chance of being
relevant?. Note that Obama did not reject the pipeline outright, but
gave himself a chance to play wishy-washy for a while before having
to commit. A specialty. Just
Wondering:
Why do universities get to investigate (or not) rapes that occur on
campus or in frat houses or are committed by college athletes? Are
they little nation states? Dusky
Desert?
What if the Saudis are letting (or causing) oil prices to fall in
order to undermine U.S. and Canadian oil production (fracking and tar
sands) because Saudi oil field decline has peaked and will decline
sharply within a decade and thus they need to get rid of the
competition and drive the price way above $100 for as long as they
can pump from their depleting reserves.

Phraseology:
The US is investigating the possible rigging of precious-metal
prices by the big banks. Possible.

Footnoted:
Amid the roar of Wall Street singing 'Recovery and Growth Forever',
a small voice, Robert Shiller's, notes that “The housing recovery
is faltering. While prices and sales of existing homes are close to
normal, construction and new home sales remain weak. Before the
current business cycle, any time housing starts were at their current
level of about one million at annual rates, the economy was in a
recession.”

Protecting
And Serving:After
being adjudged mentally incompetent by a Florida court, the mentally
ill woman was dragged through the courthouse
by her schackled-together feet. Training
Day:
For years,
Chicago cops
have
been operating a CIA-type 'black site' where prisoners were...
interviewed.

Clown
Car:Ron
Paul accused
the Congressional
Black Caucus of
opposing war – against ISIS in this instance – because its
members want to use the money for food stamps.
Nevada Republican state Assemblywoman Michele Fiore claims
that cancer
is a fungus you can flush out with salt water. Too
bad you can't get rid of Republicans as easily. Christy Perry
(Religiously Impaired, ID) says the government has no right to prevent
parents from sending
their kids to be with Jesus if they want to.

Spot
Quiz:
Remember those
large,
mysterious craters discovered in Siberia a while back, the ones that
may have been caused by a huge release of methane gas? Well, several
more – at least one of very recent origin
– have been found. It would be a Good Idea to determine just
what's going on.

Lawyer
up!
Australian scientists have concluded that at least two thirds of
smokers die from smoking.

Pig
In A Poke:The
United States' top trade official, testifying
with a hood over his head and using voice-disguising technology,urged
Congress
to give him and Obama the authority to cram new trade deals through
Congress without letting them read the documents, much less change a
single word. After being passed, senior officials will be permitted
to read redacted a copy of the agreement. Below
Zero:
JPMorgan
will
begin charging its large institutional customers to hold their money
– and we're talking about the legal stuff, not
the drug money and all that. You'd think they were Swiss bankers.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Round
and Round:
The US gives Israel over $125 billion a year to
salve our conscience for letting Hitler kill 6 million Jews.
Israel is giving $2.82 billion of it to Lockheed Martin for 14 F-35
stealth fighters. In
essence we're buying them and giving
them to Israel. They
will be delivered as soon as Lockheed figures out how to make the
damned things guns work. As far as exports go, it's a self-hoisting
petard.

Training
Day:
The government expects at least 10 crude oil train derailments a
year. Hundreds will be killed, billions in damages inflicted, oil
profits will grow. Asked
And Answered:
Bloomberg asks “why is the world so bad at tracking dirty money?”
Because the people who run the world and their bankers (as though
the two are different) don't want it tracked. Next?

Gambling
At Ricks:
Secret intelligence cables show that
Netanyahu
knowingly
lied when he claimed that Iran was producing nuclear weapons in 2012.
Lots of other
goodies, too. Spoiler
Alert:
The USGS acknowledges that "Deep
injection of wastewater is the primary cause of the dramatic rise in
detected earthquakes... in the central U.S. " Note
that they carefully did not say “...of wastewater from fracking...
was the culprit. But it is, even
if they described it as “new
technologies that enable the extraction of oil and gas from
previously unproductive reservoirs."

Eurocurse:
Yes, Germany has brought great poverty to Greece, but things at home
are not all that great either; poverty in Germany is as high today
as any time since reunification in 1990. But the German poor know
their place and don't complain like those Greek crybabies.

Picture
Op:
A man standing on the tracks in Kalama, WA, taking a selfie, was run
over and killed by an Amtrak train. First
Half:
A NY court has found the PLO and Palestinian Authority liable for
the
cost of the rockets, missiles and bullets Israel used to level Gaza
$218 million in payments to victims of attacks in Israel. Loose
Lips:
The head of the NSA has declined to comment specifically on the
recent hard-drive and SIM card hanky panky, but claimed the programs
were awfullawful.

In
Flagrante:Two
former British foreign ministers maintain that recordings of them
offering their “services” to foreigners did not prove they had
actually received cash for their efforts and thus no wrongdoing had
been proven. Soliciting
a bribe is fine, being successful at it is the crime.

As
We Knew All Along:
A new report concludes that like 'clean coal', 'carbon sequestration
– hiding CO2 deep in holes in the earth for ever and ever - doesn't
work and
isn't
going to.

Yes,
But...David
Sirota notes
that “:
just
taxing
the
1% as much
as we
tax the poor would yield billions for cash-strapped states.” Which
is another reason for not doing it.

Knock
Knock:
Three students walk in a bar, each claiming that their 1550 SAT
score makes them the best student. Which one actually got the
highest score? Right, the Asian, who beat the white kid by 50 points
and the black one by 280 points.

Exactly:
The secret TTP trade deal is likely to add millions to the amount
taxpayers will have to fork over for medicines. No, TPP does not
stand for Terrifically Profitable Pharmaceuticals, but it should.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Snort
Form:Greece's
bailout will be extended four months, less than the six Greece had
initially requested. The
catch: Greece has to submit a list of reforms by Monday, which
must
please the EC, EMU and IMF. Greece
commits to "refrain from any rollback of measures and
unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would
negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery, or financial
stability,
as assessed by [bailout monitors]." That's a huge
betrayal of the voters by the new Greek government.
In general the postponement is a win for the EU/Germany, but only
a temporary patch. Changes are needed, because the
European demand that Greece run a budget surplus for the next
decade is simply impossible, and thus not going to happen. Fighting
Dirty:
Beheadings, burnings, mass executions are okay, but ISIS better not
mess with our malls. Spreading
Democracy:
The Justice (sic) Department is going to change the rules and let US
Judges issue search warrants covering the entire
world.
Like
the President's use of Special Operations to kill people anywhere,
this will not require Congressional approval because they don't have
the power to do so. You can't violate the constitution where the
constitution doesn't apply.

Academic
Feedom:
Wel-Hock Soon,of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and
the Koch Brothers go-to climate change denial “expert” has raked
in more than $1.2 million for his efforts to cook the rest of us.

Duh:
Credit monitors have noticed that Americans
are having more trouble paying off their student debt than their
mortagesbecause
they can't get a mortgage if they can't get a job that pays enough to
pay the one, much less the other.

Balance
of Payments:America’s
balance-of-trade
salvation depends on our ability to sell a lot of killer drones to
people overseas who promise not to use them on Mall of the Americas.

Kabuki
Theater:An
attempt by members of Turkey's parliament to investigate President
Erdogan's monetary and military support of ISIShas
been quashed by... President Erdogan.

Clown
Car:
Rudi Giuliani
has
doubled down, said
he
stands by his observation that
President Obama
was not “brought up to love this country.” Scott
Walker, fresh
from redesigning the Wisconsin state university system so it would
“meet the state's
workforce need” with a lot less money, dodged
the question by saying he ‘doesn’t
know’ whether Obama is a Christian.Walker
is also not sure if he believes in evolution.Rep
Darrell
Issa (Second
String-CA):
‘We should thank’ Giuliani for making us safer...” Bill
Bomb-Iraq
Kristol claims
that ‘Iraq was safe and peaceful’ when Bush left office.
Bobby Jindal took time of from cutting state support to public
universities by $300
million
so he could give Exxon/Mobil a $263 million tax break and called
Giuliani to congratulate him on being a total asshole. Do
It Yourself:
You can easily tell in the NSA has inserted spyware on your hard
drive. Check
to see if you have a hard drive. There
you go.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Variety
Act:
Germany says the adults have carried the day. Greece, after saying
“the deal is dead and buried” has agreed to something or other –
quite what isn't exactly clear – that will postpone Armageddon for
four months. Certainly Varoufakis
will have a far more difficult time than Schauble in selling the
reported agreement, mainly because Germany
still seems to be calling the shots, especially in making the new
Greek government forget
about moderating any of the austerity measures that have
essentially ruined the country and the society to the benefit of
Northern European banks. Everyone agreed to kick
the can four months down the calendar, which is pretty much the
MO for financial efforts in Europe. Hard to envision the Greek
populace accepting these terms, and if the current leadership can't
deliver on their promises, Golden Dawn will be the big winners, not
Berlin.

Pulling
A Fast One:
If it seems like there are more ads on TV, it's because there are
more ads on TV. Cable operators are ever so slighly speeding up
programs and cutting down the credits, giving themselves an extra
three or four minutes an hour to sell to people who want to sell
things to you. For them, less is more.

House
of Cards:Standard
& Poor’s says
that Greece leaving the euro would only be a minor inconvenience for
the rest of the EU. This
is the same group that thought all those mortgage derivatives were
good investments. Another
Veil:
As the daily surveillance state strip-tease continues, today we
learn that Lenovo (world's larges maker of computers and essential MS
partner) has been installing software on all of its computers that
tracks everything you do so that ads more tailored to you pop up
everywhere you go. Oh, and they can sell the info, too. Wow,
Really?“Presidential
libraries are a costly scam”.

Here
Or There:
Some economists have just noticed that “US employment comoves
negatively”
with the accumulation of piles of cash by US corporations. Then they
try to figure out what this means. Here, lemme help: Corporations
see no demand for more or new products because the US consumer is
flat broke and way too far in debt, so
they
see no point in hiring anyone and thus keep putting all that money
under the mattress. And I don't think “comoves” is a real word,
either.

Beauty
Pageant:
According to Michele Fiore, Republican assemblywoman from Las Vegas,
getting raped only happens to “young, hot little girls” and it
they were given guns, rapist would all be killed. Who gets to hand
out the guns wasn't immediately clear.

Objective:"The
essential … goal of the euro system [was]
to
create a situation where markets can 'pressurize
governments into sound economic policies'... this requires limits on
national sovereignty, which will be resisted by democratic
governments; and... can only be overcome through the threat of a
crisis..." As
in Greece, and Ireland before that. Or to quote Beppe
Grillo,
“The Eurozone chess game enters its final stage: Germany wins in
three moves”. Or four months. Lies,
Damned Lies & Politics:In
Kansas, where truth and facts are optional in both education and
government, Secretary of State Kris Kobach was going around beating
the drums to frighten the
citizenry
over voter fraud. He claims to have referredseveral
cases
to
the US Attorney's office to no avail. The US Attorney, Barry
Grissom, replied: “So
we can avoid misstatements of facts for the future, for the record,
we have received no voter fraud cases from [Kobach's]
office in over four and a half years. And, I can assure you, I do
know what I’m talking about." But
facts don't matter much in Kansas any more, haven't in quite some
time.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Run,
Don't Walk: What if Greece isn't being forced out of the Eurozone? What if
it's playing Br'er Rabbit and really, really wants to be the
first to leave the doomed ship? It is Germany, not Greece that
controls the fate of the eurozone and quite possibly the fate of the
European experiment. The more Germany tries to dictate policy to
everyone else, the more the odds of a complete breakup rise. Few in
Europe have much enthusiasm for being bossed around by Berlin. The
IMF, which was an equal co-conspirator with Berlin in reducing Greece
to ruin, has washed its hands of the entire mess, leaving it up to
the US to come
to the rescue. That'll play well at the far end of Pennsylvania
Avenue.

Dietary
Guidelines:
Eating dirt is no longer required; panel finds actual foods - like
eggs, liver, coffee and filet mignon – that
once were banned are
actually good for you. Okay, not the steak.
And French
fries are still out. This
Just In:
Guns kill. Just
having them. Really.

Yet
Another Shoe:
On the heels of yesterdays news that the NSA had inserted spyware in
nearly every hard-drive built in the last 10 years comes word that
they and Great Britain's GCHQ has stolen the codes on pretty much all
of the SIM cards in the world – those used by ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile
and Sprint in the US and similar coverage abroad. It lets them
“secretly
monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications,
including both voice and data.” The
list never ends; I don't even trust my toaster anymore.

Accept
No Imitators:
Pinterest has shut down Hillary Clinton's account because it was
being run by Rand Paul – nice of him to try to save Hil the
trouble. She's got enough problems with the ethical
questions surrounding foreign donations.

Tourist
Season:
Yellowstone's grizzlies are emerging from hibernation way early,
sensing spring is doing the same.

Track
Trend:
Caterpillar keeps setting records. Bad ones. It's now 26
consecutive months of declining retail sales for the world's one-time
construction equipment giant. January was the worst month for its
sales since the Lehman crash. Global sales were down 14% y/y (when
sales were then down 8% over the previous year).

Contest:
Your local mall is looking for ideas for what to do with the anchor
space that Sears will be vacating. Half
A Loaf:
Walmart ($16 billion profits last year) is increasing its minimum
wage to $9 this spring and $10 next year, in line with the increase
in minimum wages in several states. The move will cover the
500,000 part-time and full-time workers who now make less than that.
The move will bring full time employees, if any can be found, to
$20,000 a year, hardly a living wage. Despite all the media
attention, the Bentonvill Beast is a latecomer, pretending
to care
about their employees while papering over the bad
press they've gotten for telling their workers to go on welfare
or
to donate food to their co-workers for Christmas.
A
hike to
$15 an hour and full healthcare benefits for all would be something
to praise, but it might cut into those profits that Sam's struggling
kids
need. Asked
& Obvious:Are
the world's
biggest banks moving money for terrorists? Is there profit in doing
so? Well, then of course; no worse than drug lords and dictators
are they?

More
and Harder:
The election will, once again, turn out to be at least fifty shades
of grey. Guess who gets tied up and whipped.

One
If By Land:
Paul Ryan is looking forward to giving international corporations
the right to reverse annoying rules and regulations that he can't
manage to kill
thorough
the electoral process. That's why he's pushing the Trade Promotion
Authority legislation that would limit Congress' role in binding
America to a treaty negotiated in secret by unelected corporate
lackeys to a simple yea/nay vote. No discussion. No bother to read
the contract. Just rubber stamp. It's all about freedom...

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Red
Rover, Red Rover:
The US has condemned Egypt for using the jets we gave them to bomb
ISIS in Libya without
asking permission
because “these sorts of things should be resolved
politically and without outside interference.” That's why Egypt
has asked the UN to send an international force to Libya.

Calling
Home:
The US is reportedly going to give 'friendly' Syrian rebels the
ability to call in airstrikes. Relax, it won't be any worse than the
ones we target ourselves.

Bunch'a
Numbers:
US factory
production rose less
than 0.2% in January as the nearly undetectable recovery creeps
along. Residential construction fell 2% during the month, too.
Mortgage applications
decreased 13.2% last week, with refinancing down 16% and purchase
applications down 7%. (Note: Americans
with
student loans are less likely to take out mortgages than young
college graduates once did.)The
producer price index (PPI) fell 0.8%. Beef
prices were up 24%. None the less, “persistent
employment gains and cheaper energy costs will help underpin domestic
demand and keep manufacturing from faltering.” As
Designed:
All sorts of financial and economic dufusses
have lately bemoaned the, to them, bewilderingly absent growth in US
hourly wages, citing the increase in profits, dividends and stock
prices as indicators of growth. The explanation is simple – it's
floating off the California coast on those container ships. Snakes
On A Plane,
Oil On A Train:
Don't think of them as accidents, derailments, or fiery infernos
polluting rivers, burning towns and killing people. Nope, they are,
officially, “unintentional releases” from railroad pipelines.
There were more than 140 of them last year as 60
to 70% of North Dakota's shale oil is shipped to refineries by
train. That's up from an average 25 a year only 3 years ago. Note
that the tank cars in the WV crash were the new and improved safer
design.

Personal
Attention:
Marco Rubio on the art of politics: "I
can buy information on any single individual in this classroom. I can
overlay it with your voter information and make a profile — but I’m
not done. I can get you directly. . . . I’m going to send an ad to
[your] computer or, increasingly, directly to [your] television set." Speak
Up:
For at least the five last years, British intelligence agencies have
been eavesdropping on lawyer/client conversations. Peaceful
Coexistence:
If you are surprised that India
is
spending $17
billion on
building
7 stealth frigates and 6 nuclear-powered subs,
you haven't been following how their economy is growing while ours is
shrinking.

Takes
One To Know One:Google
says increasing the FBI’s warrantless
digital search and seizure authority would raise “monumental and
highly complex constitutional, legal and geopolitical concerns that
should be left to Congress to decide”.

Climate
Change:
If the earth's getting warmer, what's with the cold and the snow?
Well, most of the heat has gone into the seas, more water evaporates
from the warmer seas, thus more snow (also larger rain storms in the
summer) when the wet air meets the cold air from the Arctic that
slips further south these days because the temperature difference
between the high and mid latitudes has decreased, and thus the
barrier keeping the cold where it belongs has weakened. That's the
short version.

On
The Up And Up:
After a number of deaths, the deadliest route up Mt. Everest has
been closed due to deterioration caused by global warming.

Vocabulary:
The term 'human capital' confuses
wage
workers with
capitalists. To
pretend that the source of one's income is immaterial is mistaken –
and often done for ideological reasons. The term 'human capital'
should be reserved for economic systems which practice some form of
slavery. Oh, it is.

.
. . and Only Half of What You See:
This year, 20% of the images submitted to the World
Press photo
competition
were rejected for “significant addition or subtraction to the image
content.”

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.